


You're like a Sponge (Abrasive and Colorful)

by LadyLondonderry



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Hate to Love, M/M, Sort Of, Zayn Malik - mentioned - Freeform, bad at flirting, niall horan - mentioned - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-06
Updated: 2018-08-06
Packaged: 2019-06-22 14:36:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,558
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15584058
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LadyLondonderry/pseuds/LadyLondonderry
Summary: Harry LOML Styles:Hey, can you recommend your fav shoe stores? Heels Abroad is closing and I know you know some good placesButterflies have erupted in Louis’s stomach. This is the first time Harry has ever texted him. He glances down at the beat up old Adidas he wore for his run this morning. Harry thinks Louis knows some good places? He trusts Louis’s opinion on something?Louis gulps, and then coughs up toothpaste, hastily spitting into the sink. Everything depends on this. Harry - Harry Styles - has texted him! Louis can’t mess this up. He has to be perfect. He has to have great shoe store recommendations. He feels giddy. This is it! A turn in their friendship! The toothpaste-y grin firmly on his face, he picks up his phone again just as another message comes through.Harry LOML Styles:Sorry, wrong personOh.Or, Louis's flirts look an awful lot like insults.





	You're like a Sponge (Abrasive and Colorful)

**Author's Note:**

> This is part of a Wordplay prompt challenge that a group of us are participating in for the prompt "Wind". To read the amazing fics that were written by the others on this prompt, [click here](https://archiveofourown.org/collections/wind/works), and to see all fics written as part of the challenge, [click here](https://archiveofourown.org/collections/wordplay_fic_challenge/works) or find the masterpost for this year’s challenge [here](https://wordplayfics.tumblr.com/post/175608230403/wordplay-2018-every-week-a-prompt-is-chosen-using).

Louis’s phone lights up from where he’s perched it against the mirror while he brushes his teeth. He unlocks it with his free hand and immediately almost chokes on his toothbrush.

**Harry LOML Styles:** _Hey, can you recommend your fav shoe stores? Heels Abroad is closing and I know you know some good places_

Butterflies have erupted in Louis’s stomach. This is the first time Harry has  _ ever _ texted him. He glances down at the beat up old Adidas he wore for his run this morning. Harry thinks Louis knows some good places? He trusts Louis’s opinion on something?

Louis gulps, and then coughs up toothpaste, hastily spitting into the sink. Everything depends on this. Harry -  _ Harry Styles _ \- has texted him! Louis can’t mess this up. He has to be perfect. He has to have  _ great _ shoe store recommendations. 

He has to text his sister to find some good shoe stores to recommend. 

He feels giddy. This is it! A turn in their friendship! The toothpaste-y grin firmly on his face, he picks up his phone again just as another message comes through.

**Harry LOML Styles:** _Sorry, wrong person_

Oh. 

Feeling all those heady emotions draining out of him, Louis puts the phone back down - face down - onto the counter. Right. Of course. He shouldn’t have- shouldn’t have even assumed Harry was texting him on purpose. They’re not even really friends.

A weight has settled in the pit of his stomach. Louis rinses off his toothbrush, sets it back in the cup and picks up his phone again. He goes into his messages app and deletes the two from Harry, not even opening them. Then he sends a text to the work group chat that he doesn’t feel well enough to come in. 

Today is officially a going-back-to-bed day. 

— 

When Louis started his position working the front desk at Student Services, he hadn’t had any idea that this was about to be the most challenging job of his life.

Not because the job itself was difficult. Ninety percent of his role was to greet students and then direct them somewhere else. He spent a whole lot of time fucking around on his computer trying to look like he was doing work when his supervisor walked in. Most of the point of getting a job working within the university was that there was almost guaranteed downtime to work on assignments (or to get online and watch live feeds of footie matches). 

Then, after only a month of working in Student Services, the No-Good-Best-Worst-Wonderful-Horrible Thing happened. Harry Styles was hired.

Of the three desks in the waiting area for Student Services, Louis works at the one nearest the door. A student by the name of Liam works at the one furthest from the door, and as of October, Harry Styles began working in the middle one.

Harry was the most beautiful man Louis had ever seen. He fell head over heels on day one when Harry walked through the doors with huge purple boots on and a satchel overladen with sketchbooks, oversized headphones around his neck and chewing gum with his mouth open.

He was a vision. Three hours a day five days a week, from nine in the morning until noon, Louis admired Harry. Their first semester together Louis could barely work up the courage to talk to him. He talked to Liam a fair amount, because Liam would spend every free moment trying to work on his homework (something  _ serious _ like  _ politics _ or whatever) and Louis liked to try to make him laugh. Any time Harry spoke up though, Louis immediately became tongue tied. Shook. He could answer questions about the job but anything past that his mind would go absolutely blank.

It took a whole semester to get over that and now, looking back, Louis sincerely wishes he could go back to that stage.

Because the next stage, that happened after coming back from winter holidays, was about a million times worse. For some reason, maybe it was the encouragement of his sisters (who were definitely prying into his business) or the encouragement of his best mates from college, but suddenly he  _ found his voice _ and with it, the same thing happened that had always happened every single time he met a cute boy.

The sarcasm happened. 

Some people were naturally good at flirting. Some people were fairly bad at flirting, but came off cute trying it anyway. Then there was Louis… who was so naturally bad at flirting that the boys he was crushing on would go out of their way to avoid him.

Stan, his childhood best friend, was probably the only exception to that rule. Stan, who already knew Louis didn’t hate him, and so when Louis started getting heavily sarcastic with him knew just how to react. Stan, who Louis dated for a week before they both decided that it was just sort of… weird, and went back to being best friends.

With Harry… Louis wasn’t so lucky.

It wasn’t like Louis was sarcastic on  _ purpose! _ He couldn’t help it! It felt so smart and funny in his head, and then came tumbling past his lips uncontrollably - Louis never even realised just what he’d said until seeing people’s reactions.

All he wanted was to praise Harry to the skies. All he ended up doing was creating an invisible wall and icy atmosphere between them. 

— 

It’s an unnaturally warm day outside, and when Louis opens the door to Student Services he’s met with a cool breeze from the ancient oscillating fan someone must have dug out of the basement. 

“Thank fuck,” he says, letting the door fall shut behind him and going to stand directly in front of the fan. “I thought I was going to melt out there!”

“Oi!” Liam calls from where he’s already seated at his desk (because Liam is much better at being on time than Louis is). “Don’t just block it, that fan’s for all of us!”

“Yeah yeah, just give me a minute Li. Think I might have heat stroke or something.”

Liam huffs but Louis ignores him, soaking up a bit more cool air before backing up and heading behind the desk.

He doesn’t notice until he’s sat down that Harry’s already there, tucked away at his desk working happily on a sketch of some kind. He’s wearing the most incredible white shirt covered in tiny pink flamingos. His sleeves are folded up just an inch and the underside of the sleeves looks dark blue. 

“Are you wearing that shirt inside out?” Louis asks.

Harry looks down at himself. “Um… No?”

“Right,” says Louis. “Only the sleeves do make it look it.”

“Oh,” says Harry. “It’s reversible!” He pulls his sleeve up to reveal more tiny flamingoes on the inside.

“You bought a shirt someone sewed together inside-out?” Louis deadpans. Only Harry would buy a reversible flamingo shirt. It’s adorable.

“It’s not inside-out,” Harry says with a grumble, going back to his drawing.

“Whatever you say. Oi,” says Louis, leaning over. “What are you drawing, Art Major?”

Harry jumps and then looks sideways at Louis. “Homework for Landscape Drawing.” Chewing absently on his bottom lip as he leans back and looks at the piece. “Only I think I forgot to add any doors to the buildings…”

“That’s probably your subconscious,” Louis says. “Feeling trapped?”

“No…” Harry frowns. Louis thinks his drawing looks quite nice, even without the doors.

“My mum says if you keep frowning like that elves will knit your eyebrows together.”

Harry frowns but also looks concerned now. Louis loves it.

“Don’t worry,” he says. “Even if your face sticks like that it still won’t look bad. Just weird.” He thinks for a minute. “Well. A little bad. But I’ll accept you anyway.”

The bell above the door chimes and two students walk in, interrupting their clearly very meaningful conversation. Louis sits back and prays their names aren’t in the middle of the alphabet.

— 

“You should never cut your hair,” Louis says one day without thinking.

“What?” asks Harry, putting a hand up to his curls as if to check they’re still there.

“I just think you’d look odd with your hair cut,” Louis says. “Liam, wouldn’t he look odd? Like when you cut the fur on a shaggy dog.”

_ (Those dogs are so cute, _ Louis thinks).

Liam looks thoughtful. “I think as long as he likes the hair style he chooses he’ll look very nice,” he says.

“You’re no help,” says Louis. 

— 

“You brought me breakfast!” Louis says one colder morning when Harry carries in a coffee and brown paper bag that smells like a toasted bagel.

“I brought my own breakfast,” Harry says, sitting down. 

“You didn’t bring me breakfast?” Louis asks, feigning hurt. “I’m offended. To make it up to me you have to take over all of my students for the day.” he puts his name placard on Harry’s desk.

“Um,” says Harry, looking uncertain.

“No, yeah, that sounds good,” Louis says, getting up and walking out of the room to show he’s serious.

(He’s not serious, of course, he just really wants a bagel now and the cafe is just on the other side of the building).

— 

“Has anyone taken Nutrition 1101?” Louis asks, flipping through his textbook on a rather humid day.

“Nope,” says Liam. 

“I have,” says Harry.

“Of course you have,” Louis says. “You like kale and shit.”

“Um,” says Harry. “I don’t actually  _ like _ kale at all…”

Louis looks up at him. “Yes you do,” he says. “Don’t be ridiculous. You look like a health nut.”

“I’m not a health nut,” Harry argues, his voice going rather whiny. 

“Yes you are,” Louis says. “Look at that hair. I think you drink bullet coffee.”

“I don’t even  _ drink _ coffee,” says Harry.

“Don’t like to me,” says Louis.

— 

“That drawing looks like Liam,” Louis says.

“It’s a  _ girl,” _ says Harry plaintively.

“Yeah, but like. Liam as a girl.”

— 

“You look like an angry frog,” Louis says one day.

“No I don’t,” says Harry indignantly.

— 

The party Louis is at has been going on long enough that already every surface Louis leans against is sticky. He scrunches up his face as he attempts to wipe whatever stickiness has come off onto the seat of his skinnies. He wanted to wear these for another week at least.

The bass is pounding at a level that makes it virtually impossible for anyone in the living room to actually hear themselves, not that that seems to stop them from trying. The room is a mixture of people standing much too close to each other in an attempt to communicate, and people who have found their chosen hookup for the night, and are wasting no time in locking lips.

Louis’s been here longer than he’d like to admit, but mostly because the people he came with are, undoubtedly, still playing drinking games in the back garden and one of them (Zayn maybe?) has his phone. Oh, the woes of skinny jeans with fake pockets. 

He’s more than halfway to shitfaced, which is generally right where he likes to be but at this moment he’s finding it downright lonely. Why does he not know anyone in this room? It’s a travesty but it would also be way too much work to try to introduce himself to anyone. 

He makes his way to the hallway and through to the front porch, past ridiculous numbers of red solo cups, his whole self swaying with the music of that song he’s heard on the radio ten times this week alone. If only he could remember the title. Or the words.

Out front is a breath of fresh air (literally), and as he makes his way out onto the porch he finally sees faces he recognizes. That girl in his statistics class, for instance. And those two guys in his economics lecture. And… Niall?

Niall, who seems to have spotted him as well. 

Niall, Harry’s roommate who sometimes comes by the office just to hang out with Harry, and brings him Starbucks and always forgets his umbrella. Louis likes Niall. He seems fun and has proclaimed how much he’s into women several times so he’s definitely not competition.

(Not that Louis really has a chance with Harry. Definitely not). 

Niall makes his way over, downing the rest of the solo cup in his hand and leveling Louis with what can only be referred to as  _ a glare. _ Louis tries to smile back, lighten whatever mood he’s in, but it’s to no avail.

“I need to talk to you,” Niall says. 

“Hello Niall!” Louis says. “You are talking! Please continue. I do love talking.”

Niall doesn’t smile, although Louis thinks he’s rather funny.

The people around them seem to be vacating the side of the porch Louis and Niall have found themselves on. 

“Don’t be funny,” Niall says.

“Okay,” says Louis. (At least Niall recognizes what Louis is trying to do?)

“What the fuck do you have against Harry?”

Louis blinks. “What?” he asks. “I don’t have anything against Harry.”  _ (I want to steal Harry a baby and help him raise it in a cottage in the country, _ he doesn’t say). 

“Don’t be dense. Harry’s been complaining about it for weeks. Where do you get off mocking him every day?”

“I-” Louis swallows. “What? I don’t mock him. You’re having a wind up, mate.”

Niall rolls his eyes. “Right,” he says. “Sure. So Harry’s just got it wrong when he talks about how much you hate him?”

Louis’s mouth has gone dry. Harry thinks he hates him? Hate is very different than accidental insults. “No,” he says. “I mean. Yeah. He’s wrong. I don’t hate him! I like him!”

“Well he certainly doesn’t like you,” Niall says, face serious. “I wouldn’t either, if you spent every day mocking me.”

“I- I don’t-” Louis feels a pit opening up in his stomach, a deep black hole swirling inside him. He wants to throw himself to the ground and start screaming. He knew he wasn’t good at speaking to Harry, but. Harry hates him?

He feels sick.

“I have to go,” Louis turns away, keeping one hand on the railing to steady himself. Screw waiting for Zayn. He’ll get his phone tomorrow. Maybe if he’s lucky he’s so drunk right now he’ll forget about everything by tomorrow.

(He knows he’s not that drunk).

— 

No one told Louis that he could get his heart broken without even  _ talking about it _ to the love of his life, and honestly he thinks it’s pretty unfair. 

He lays on the couch all Sunday, grumbling when his roommate comes in and out, and facetimes his mum to get the scoop on all the drama going on back home. 

He wonders about the possibility of changing schools. Maybe he should start fresh at another university and then never ever open his mouth around cute boys over again. 

On Monday, the only reason he doesn’t call in sick to work is because that would mean texting the work group chat. Which Harry is on. Somehow this sounds a whole lot worse than going to work and trying to act normal. Like it would show how upset he is. 

(As if that doesn’t show on his face).

Still, he doesn’t want to be there. He ends up at the office much earlier than he needed to get there, earlier than anyone else, in fact, and sits in awkward silence at his desk for almost ten minutes before someone else shows up.

It’s Liam, thank God. Liam, who opens the door and does a double take when he sees Louis already in his spot. 

“Am I late?” asks Liam, looking with confusion at the standard school clock above the door. 

“No,” says Louis. He’s fiddling with his screen, changing the colour output until everything turns a shade of pink.

“Oh,” says Liam. “Um. Okay.”

He sits down, and Louis wants him to say something else, because he feels like he’s sitting in a pool of his own silence, but Liam says nothing and so Louis says nothing and that’s that.

Harry arrives nearly ten minutes later. He’s still there before they officially unlock the doors, but the second he enters Louis feels himself wanting to comment, like word vomit threatening to overflow.  _ You’re late, _ he wants to say.  _ Harold, you’ve let down our boss, the department, the whole university.  _

He swallows it down.  _ This is why Harry thinks you hate him,  _ he tells himself.  _ If you can’t say anything nice, don’t say anything. _

Harry is wearing a pink and white spotted shirt.  _ Dropping out of school  to be the next Minnie Mouse? _ No. Shut up. He won’t take that as a compliment.

“Hello, Harry!” Liam says, a smile on his face. “How was your weekend?”

Why couldn’t Louis have thought of something like that?

Harry puts down his mess of a backpack - keyrings jangling all over it, a waterbottle clipped to the back because a can of Arizona is in one side pocket and a can of redbull is in the other - and settles into his seat. “Not terrible,” he says after thinking it over. His voice is slow and syrupy, always a little more so first thing in the morning, and Louis loves it. Wishes right now that he didn’t.

“I spent the weekend at my parents’ because Gemma was in town. Didn’t really do much of anything besides binge  _ Parks and Rec _ and eat all the biscuits in the house because I didn’t have to buy them myself.”

Liam laughs. “I know the feeling,” he says. “I can’t wait until the end of the semester when I can use all the leftover blocks on my meal plan to purchase enough pizza for a month and eat it in a week.”

“Oh yeah,” Harry says. “I like to spend it all at the bakery on East Campus. Schneiders? They start baking extra at the end of the semester because they know students will buy boxes of fifty with their leftover blocks.”

“Sounds like a dream,” says Liam. “I might check it out.”

There’s a pause in their conversation and Louis can feel Harry’s eyes on him. This is the part where he says something flirty.  _ Mocking. _ Well, not anymore. He steadfastly stares at his computer monitor (still pink) and doesn’t mention anything about how  _ it would be a lot cheaper to just buy a pound of sugar and a cup of water for an equally sticky and sickening mess. _

Eventually Liam starts up the conversation again, but Louis isn’t paying attention. He’s still staring at his screen and wondering how he’s going to survive the rest of the semester until summer starts. It’s difficult not word-vomiting all over Harry, and he’s not even sure what the best result he could hope for now would be. Indifference? Is indifference better than hatred?

He sneaks a look over in Harry’s direction. Gazes for only a moment at his beautiful curls, his puffy cherubic cheeks, his soft smile as he follows along with whatever Liam’s saying. God. Louis has fallen so hard for this boy. He really would settle for indifference over hatred, even if he has to work for it. 

— 

“Mate, you look like a right mess, and I’m not just saying that.”

Blearily, Louis blinks his eyes open frowns. “How did you get in my room?” he asks as Zayn shuts the door behind himself. 

“Your door wasn’t even locked,” Zayn says. “Which is good, considering you haven’t answered any of my texts since this morning.”

“I was  _ napping,” _ Louis huffs, which. Is not technically a lie. He just doesn’t mention the fact that he’s only been napping for twenty minutes.

“If you’ve been napping since the first text I sent you that’s just called sleeping, and also is a different sort of worrying,” Zayn says, walking over and shucking off his shoes before climbing into the bed Louis is curled up on. “Now I don’t know about you, but I’d really like to get well and truly sloshed this weekend before I have to start cramming for exams. There’s a party on 15th, down past where it merges into the fairgrounds, let’s get going.”

“There’s always a party on 15th,” Louis mumbles. He’s curled around his pillow, as he does when he sleeps, but he straightens out one leg to put it across Zayn’s lap. “And you’re on your own tonight. I should just start studying now. Good grades to achieve and all that, you know?”

“No,” says Zayn, deadpan. “You’ve never studied a day in your life. The fact that you got into this university at all is a miracle.”

_ “Hey.” _

“So you’re going to tell me what’s actually going on, or you’re going to follow me to this party, get drunk, and then tell me what’s actually going on.”

_ “Or,” _ says Louis, “I will stay here and watch  _ Queer Eye _ , you will stay here and watch  _ Queer Eye _ with me, and we will talk about nothing except how disgusting straight people are.”

He’s pretty sure Zayn is rolling his eyes at him. Louis finds his phone and unlocks it - ah yes, four missed texts and a facetime. “Aww, you missed me!”

“Yeah, I thought you were dead,” Zayn says. “You haven’t gone out anywhere with me in two weeks! What’s going on with you?”

“I’m just…” Louis struggles to find the words. He doesn’t want to say  _ I’m tired of myself around other people _ but that’s sort of how he feels. He just can’t stop thinking about what Niall said. It had hurt at first, realising that Harry was reading his affections so wrong - after all, Louis had known to a certain extent that he was bad at flirting, but it hadn’t occurred to him that it was coming off as malicious - but then that comment burrowed down inside of him and got stuck. It hurts now in a different way. It’s a sort of ache in his chest that appears every time he speaks to anyone, because he’s hyper aware of how he’s coming off. Everything he’s saying. Do they hear what he means to say? Or is he coming off as childish? Mean? Snide? Is he actually liked at all? Or do people just put up with him? Is he the funny one with a mean streak? He never would have thought so, he thought everyone understood his humour, but… 

Maybe he’s wrong.

So sue him, he doesn’t want to go out partying and end up offending a whole fraternity of people, either without ever realising it, or being aware even as the words come out of his mouth that it’s a bad decision.

“I’m tired,” Louis says instead.

Zayn pinches his leg and Louis yelps, jumping and drawing back into a sulky ball around his pillow. “You’re mean,” he says.

“Stop sulking,” Zayn says. “I don’t know why you’re sulking, but you’re clearly sulking.”

“How do I get you to stop bugging me?” Louis complains. 

“Party. 15th Avenue.”

“Another way.”

“Nope.”

“I’ll call campus security.”

“I smoke with campus security.”

“Fuck you, I know you do.”

“Be ready in twenty, I’m going to use your bathroom to fix my hair.”

Louis scowls at his backside as Zayn stands up and walks over to the tiny en-suite. Fine. He’ll go to the party for half an hour and book it back home when Zayn gets distracted. Then he’ll watch more  _ Queer Eye. _

— 

Zayn has taken Louis’s keys.

Zayn has taken Louis’s keys and disappeared and  _ fuck Zayn, honestly. _ It’s almost eleven and Louis would like to just go home but now Zayn is apparently on the roof, according to some of his friends Louis stumbled across, but he can’t for the life of himself find out how to  _ get _ to the roof so now he’s just sort of wandering aimlessly, third Stella in hand, and wondering how his life has come to this. He’s supposed to  _ enjoy _ parties! He’s a partier! 

Well. At least he can blame some of his unhappiness on whoever decided to add Florida Georgia Line to the mix that’s blasting through the house. Who on earth would choose this?

He wanders out to the back, hoping to bum a cig from someone, only to spot a familiar face.

“Liam?” Louis calls, making his way through a number of people sprawled in the grass. “Liam Payne are you at a  _ party? _ A  _ campus party?” _

Liam is holding a red solo cup that Louis would be shocked to find anything besides water in. He’s standing just out of range of the fire pit, mostly alone but close enough that he could be involved in their conversation if he’d like. 

“Hallo Louis,” Liam says, a look of surprise on his face. He doesn’t seem unhappy to see him, though. 

“Hal _ lo _ Liam,” Louis mimics, sidling over to him. “What’s in the cup?”

Liam looks down into, as if studying the contents. “Not sure, actually,” he says. “Someone gave it to me, but I’m really not much of a drinker. Didn’t want to turn them down, though.” He holds it out to Louis. “You want it?”

Louis’s Stella is empty. “Certainly I do,” he says, taking the drink. It smells sweet like candy. Probably vodka, then. Zayn is still nowhere to be found, and Louis is just teetering on the happy place of drinking.

He takes a long drink.

“But you still haven’t answered my question, dear Lima Bean. What are you doing at this fine establishment?”

“Oh, just getting to know people,” Liam says, looking very zen about standing sober in a field of drunk people (like Louis). “I came here with Harry, but I think he’s been drawn into a game of table tennis, so I’ve come out here for a breath of air.”

“I think at a place like this, we call that beer pong,” Louis says. The drink in his hands is fruity and arguably better than Stella and he’s planning on finishing it quite fast. “You’re too sober for your own good, you know.”

“Probably,” says Liam, sounding fairly cheerful all things considered. Louis would like to be that cheerful.

“What’s your secret, Liam?” Louis asks.

“My- my what?” Liam looks taken aback.

“Your  _ secret!”  _ Louis hands Liam back the now-empty cup. “You’re so happy all the time! And you work hard! And you’re friends with Harry!” He frowns. “I want to be friends with Harry. Did you know he thinks I hate him?”

“Do you?” asks Liam.

“Of course not,” says Louis. “I’d rather like to kiss him. And play with his hair.”

Liam looks at him with interest now. “You don’t act like that,” he says slowly. “I think you might come off a bit… obtuse.”

“Don’t use fancy math words with me at a time like this,” Louis says, raising his voice to be heard over the gaggle of happy girls who have just arrived on the porch. “It’s not my fault! I don’t  _ mean _ to be mean! It’s all meant to be compliments!”

Liam frowns, a deep frown that looks like he’s contemplating the theological complexities of the universe. Louis refrains from telling him that.

“Have you tried  _ actually _ complimenting him?” Liam asks finally.

“I thought that was what I was doing!”

“No, no, like- Just go tell him you like his shirt. Or that he smells nice. Or that you think he’s good at his job.”

“When  _ you _ say that it sounds like a compliment,” Louis argues, “but when  _ I _ say that I sound like I’m giving him the wind up! Liam, have you _ heard  _ me speak?”

Liam looks genuinely worried now, and maybe Louis thinks it’s because all the thoughts that have been rattling around inside his head for the last month or so are now outside his head, but he’s also feeling rather swimmy in general and he doesn’t think he could stop his mouth running now if he tried. 

“I didn’t even  _ know _ Harry hated me, Liam! I thought we were getting along fine! My mum says I can be a little prickly but I thought that wasn’t that bad, and then fookin’ Niall had to come along and tell me that Harry hates me! I love him, Liam! I want to grow a vegetable garden in the country with him! I want to hear him talk about his stupid major all day and look at his dumb face and kiss his lips because they look like bees stung them but in a good way! But I can’t because I say everything that comes into my head because I’m an  _ arsehole _ and so Harry hates me and Niall hates me and you probably hate me and the only thing I can do is stop talking but-” Oh fuck, his voice is cracking now. “-But I don’t want that! Because the last few weeks have been  _ horrible _ and I think I’m just pissing everyone off because they think I’m ignoring them but I’m  _ not, _ Liam! I just can’t- I can’t  _ do it anymore.” _

He whirls around back toward the house, thoughts of finding Zayn and forcing him to leave at the forefront of his mind, but as soon as he does he sees Harry standing on the steps, definitely within earshot with how loud Louis was yelling. As soon as he makes eye contact, though, Harry turns and immediately pushes the door aside to go in.

Louis would sit down on the grass and have a little cry right there, except Liam comes and wraps his arms around him and so Louis (not that he will ever admit to this) has a little cry into Liam’s surprisingly muscular shoulders. 

“You’re not a bad person, Louis Tomlinson,” Liam says although Louis would very much like to disagree with that. For one thing, Liam is going to have to wash this snotty shirt now because of him.

— 

When Louis wakes up, he doesn’t do so in his own bed. Or, judging by the lack of cracks and water stains on the walls, even his own dorm. 

When Louis wakes up, he is in a bed with blue plaid sheets, and sitting at the desk right next to him is Niall Horan. 

Louis’s head is already pounding, but now his heart begins pounding too, because  _ shit, _ Niall doesn’t like him. And if he does something wrong Niall will go tell Harry and then Harry will have more reason not to like him and  _ shit, that’s right, Harry was there last night—  _

“Harry said I need to apologize to you,” Niall says.

Louis wonders whether this is a fever dream. “What the fuck?” he says.

Niall doesn’t look too happy. He pushes his glasses up his nose. “Harry said that I shouldn’t have said that… stuff to you, the last time I saw you. So. I’m sorry.” He stands from the desk, the chair giving a screech of disagreement, and slings his bag over his shoulder. “Even though I’m really not because I was just looking out for him. But. He wanted me to say that.”

Then Niall leaves, and Louis is alone. In someone else’s bed. He has no idea who’s.

_ Oh shit what if he’s been abducted? _

No. Niall was here. And the door’s not locked.

Just as Louis is contemplating getting up and making a run for it - because he’s never been drunk enough to end up in someone else’s home before and he does  _ not _ know how to deal with that situation - the door opens again, and this time Liam Payne walks through the door.“What the fuck,” says Louis, before forcibly closing his mouth. 

“Um,” says Liam. He’s holding a bowl and a spoon to his chest. “I have breakfast. Would you like some? I mean, it’s just cereal.”

“No,” says Louis, because his brain is still sort of stuck on  _ what the fuck _ and the rest of him is entirely unsure what to do.

“Okay,” says Liam. He sits down at the desk eats a spoonful of cereal. “You’re welcome to help yourself, though. There’s more in the kitchenette.”

“Who calls it that?” Louis mumbles. Then he frowns. “Was Niall really just here?”

“Yeah,” says Liam. “We were having a study party. Big test this week.”

“Why are you acting like everything is super normal?” Louis asks. “You seem like the most normal person in the world, so anything abnormal should really fuck you up.”

Liam shrugs. “I never get to be  _ in _ with the drama,” he says. “This is the first time I’m not hearing it second- or third-hand. I’m enjoying it.” He takes another spoonful. Louis’s stomach growls.

“Right,” says Louis. “Well I’m off to go crawl under my covers and die and probably quit work, because I don’t have a super clear memory of the end of last night but I remember the important bits.” He sits forward and then regrets it, the pounding in his head growing worse for a moment. 

“Maybe take it slow,” Liam says as Louis gets to his feet. “You’re welcome to stay! The study group is quiet and you look like you need some quiet.”

Louis, who has never been to a study group in his life, is not about to start now. He sidles out of the room he now assumes is Liam’s, and heads through the small shared living room that, sure enough, does have a number of people working on what looks like some sort of unnecessarily difficult math problem. Niall, one of the seven or so people, does not look at him.

The sun is too bright outside but at least Louis realises Liam’s dorm is only just down the street from his, so the walk in his party clothes from last night isn’t too shameful. He follows in a number of students that he recognizes from floors below his own, but realises while he’s taking the lift up that he definitely doesn’t have his key. Shit. Zayn definitely isn’t even awake yet, not that Louis wants to go halfway across campus to Zayn’s dorm to get his own key back.

Hoping that his RA is in his room and will be able to unlock Louis’s door, he steps off the lift and then stops in his tracks.

Because Harry Styles is sitting in front of his door.

“What the fuck,” says Louis.

Harry looks up. “Oh!” he says, getting to his feet. 

Louis walks over. “Whaaaaaat the fuck,” he says. “Are you doing here?”

“Um,” says Harry. “Can we talk about this inside your room?”

“No,” says Louis. He should be careful with his words, he knows he should be. To try to not scare Harry off from whatever he’s doing here. “We can’t. Or we could. Because I’d like to. But I’ve not got my keys.”

“You… don’t have your keys?” Harry asks, frowning like he does. It’s a comfortingly familiar thing.

Louis shrugs. “A friend took them at the party last night,” he said.

“Oh,” says Harry.

“So. It’s not my fault.”

“I wasn’t saying that.”

“I know. I mean. I’m just saying. We can’t go inside.”

“Oh.”

Louis is about to die of mortification. “So…” he says. “Is this about last night?”

“Well,” says Harry, and that means yes.

“Because I don’t know how much you heard, but however much you did, you should probably forget it. I mean. I was drunk.”

Harry’s face falls, just a little, and Louis wants to cry all over again. 

“I don’t want to forget it, though,” Harry says. 

“Why? Because you want to revel in how much of a mess I am?” asks Louis, his bitterness getting the best of him. 

“No,” says Harry. “Because I finally, um, figured you out.”

“What?” Louis asks, feeling truly confused now.”

Harry leans back against Louis’s door. “I know Niall told you I hated you,” he says slowly. It’s the perfect speed and Louis could - and does - hang on every word. “But, like, that wasn’t entirely true? I thought that you hated me because you were always, um, making fun of me, and I was really upset by that, but what you said last night makes me think that maybe- maybe you weren’t making fun of me?”

Louis shakes his head emphatically. “Never,” he says, but then retraces his steps. “I mean. Maybe sort of sometimes. To be perfectly honest. But not in a bad way, I swear!”

“It’s just that I speak sort of slowly,” Harry says, pinching his lip between his fingers. “And you speak, like,  _ extra _ fast. Like you’re on Gilmore Girls. And you’re really good at being witty and I’m  _ not, _ or maybe I am but I’m not fast like you at it, so I thought maybe you were making fun of me because I’m not on your level.”

Louis’s eyes grow wide. “No,” he says. “Absolutely not.” He wants to say something about how he could listen to Harry for hours. He doesn’t.

“Yeah,” Harry smiles. “I heard you last night, and then I was thinking that maybe I had you all wrong, so I wanted to come and, um, talk to you face to face? Because I thought maybe we could, like, get it all straightened out.”

“I don’t hate you,” Louis says immediately. “I’m just really  _ really _ bad at- um. Talking.”  _ Flirting. _

“And I don’t hate you,” Harry says. “And I’ve kind of missed your talking at Student Services. Now that I know it’s not, um, mocking.”

“I’m really bad at not talking,” Louis says. He might have had something more intelligent to say, but staring into Harry’s green, greeny-blue eyes were quite distracting.

“Right,” says Harry. And he smiles, quite slowly. “But there was also something else that you were saying last night, maybe in the heat of the moment, about me.”

Louis Tomlinson has blushed very few times in his life. This is one of those times. “Oh?” he squeaks.

“Yeah,” says Harry, and that slow smile is wide now. “And maybe I’m wrong here, but I think I’ve finally figured you out, and I think I’d like it very much if you could possibly confirm that I’m correct.”

And Louis isn’t entirely one hundred percent sure that he knows what Harry is saying, but also Harry is leaning forward a little, and down a little, and  _ Louis has incredibly gross morning breath and no key into his room and come to think of it several of his floor-mates are probably able to hear this conversation going on- _

And Louis leans up, just a little, to meet Harry’s lips, and they’re just as soft as he imagined them to be.

“I’m not going to stop, like, acting like me,” Louis says when Harry opens his eyes. 

“Sure,” says Harry. He’s smiling and his eyes are happy and Louis wants to pinch those cheeks but they’re not there -  _ yet. _

“But it’s not mocking,” Louis clarifies.

“No it’s not,” Harry agrees.

“Gentle teasing, maybe,” Louis says.

“I can work with that,” Harry says.

“Niall hates me,” Louis points out.

“He’ll come around,” Harry says. 

“I’d like to do that again,” Louis requests, moving a little closer.

“Yes,” says Harry. “But really, do you have any plans to get into your room?”

Their lips meet once more. “Wouldn’t you like to know,” says Louis.

**Author's Note:**

> A comment or kudos would make my day!
> 
> You can find me at [LondonFoginaCup](http://londonfoginacup.tumblr.com) \- fic post is [here!](http://londonfoginacup.tumblr.com/post/177815835369/youre-like-a-sponge-abrasive-and-colorful)


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